The Disgusting Beautiful Garbage Angel Burger

One of my goals for 2018 is to work my way through as much of The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book as I possibly can. But since another of my goals for 2018 is to not die a horrible cholesterol-laden death, I’m trying to limit my Bob’s burger intake to 2 or 3 a month. I made my first Bob’s burger on January 4, so I was definitely due for another.

If the Internet is to be believed, January 24 is Kristen Schaal’s birthday. A Louise Belcher Tribute Burger seemed the ideal way to both continue on my Bob’s Burgers journey and commemorate that blessed event, but nothing in TBBBB jumped out and said “THIS, this is the thing that will properly show my appreciation for the existence of Kristen Schaal, this is how I will celebrate the day the Universe saw fit to gift us with her presence.”

So I decided to come up with something on my own.

For this exercise, I created a Freaky Fridayish scenario in my head: what if Louise were in Bob’s body, with Bob’s cooking skills, understanding of flavors, and ability to reach the cooktop, but still retained her inherent Louiseness, her unshakeable devotion to her family and by extension the restaurant, combined her equally unshakeable desire to fuck with people, and of course her love of candy?

With all of that in mind, The Disgusting Beautiful Garbage Angel Burger was born. Much like a first crush, it is an overwhelming spicy sweet monstrosity that one will remember fondly and hope to never experience again.

THE BUN

The bun is a cinnamon-sugar dusted baked yeast donut, a slightly-modified version of this recipe from Love is in my tummy. If you’re not up to baking your own donuts, the brioche buns from Costco will work nicely, just dust on a little extra sugar.

Place ingredients in bread machine in the order listed and run the Dough cycle. (If you don’t have a bread machine, follow the above link to the original recipe for manual instructions.) When completed, preheat oven to 400°F, turn the dough out onto a lightly-floured board, divide into two equal parts and gently form into rounds. Transfer to a baking sheet or stone, cover and let rest for about 15 minutes, until slightly puffy-looking. Bake for 10-12 minutes until tops are browned, transfer to wire rack and let cool before dusting with a mix of 2 parts powdered sugar to 1 part cinnamon. Do not slice until just before you’re ready to assemble the burgers.

THE TOPPINGS

This burger is topped with candied bacon, smoked gouda, green chile salsa, and iceberg lettuce. I used 505 Southwestern because that’s what I had in the house, but you can substitute another brand or make your own, or even just use green chiles straight for a little extra zing. The important thing is to have something spicy that is also green and sort of slimy-looking. I feel very strongly that Louise would want that.

If you’ve never candied bacon before, neither had I before I made this burger and it’s stupid easy and now I want to put it on everything I eat from this point forward. Remember that oven you preheated to 400°F to make the donuts? You’re going to use it again. Line a baking sheet with a Silpat or parchment paper, spread out 4 strips of bacon, sprinkle them with about half a teaspoon of brown sugar each, throw them in the oven, and watch them very closely after the first 6 minutes. I used turkey bacon and put it in for 10 minutes and should have pulled it a little sooner, it was delicious but could have been deliciouser, so learn from my mistake.

I went with smoked gouda because I already had spicy and sweet covered and wanted smoky in the mix but without too assertive a cheese. Iceberg lettuce because I think it’s the vegetable that Louise would most likely tolerate if she had to eat a vegetable, and also because this burger didn’t need any other flavors but desperately needed something cool and crunchy.

Do yourself a favor and get your burger assembly prep done before you start the patties. Slice your buns, slice your cheese, tear off your lettuce, break your bacon strips in half, open your salsa jar, etc. Your hands are going to be a mess very soon.

THE PATTY

The patty has peanut butter cups in it. I’m just going to tell you that right now so when you read the list of ingredients you don’t think I meant to type something other than “peanut butter cups” when I typed “peanut butter cups”.

Gently mix the first 3 ingredients until just combined, and do your best to form patties. This is a very sticky mix. You will not have an easy time of it. Unless you’re a way better person than I am and your super power is “make pretty burger patties from even the most gelatinous of meat blends” in which case kudos to you but I think you could have chosen a more useful super power. Anyway, assuming that’s not the case, you can do what I did which was divide the patty mix into two parts, put them on a plate, sort of pat them into burger shapes, sprinkle the tops with black pepper, use a spatula to scrape them off the plate and flip them over so you can pepper the other sides. Put a couple of tablespoons of oil in a cast iron or nonstick pan over medium-high heat, transfer the patties to the pan as gracefully as you can which probably isn’t very so be prepared to nudge them back into patty-shape, and cook 5-6 minutes on each side until cooked through and firm. Chorizo + chicken = no type of rare is an option here like you can do with a beef burger, you need to cook these all. the. way. through. After you’ve flipped them and have about 2 minutes of cooking time left, place the sliced gouda on the patties and cover the pan so the cheese can melt (use a piece of foil as a tent if your pan doesn’t have an actual lid).